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I put the Cloake board on about 4 days to a week before graft to get the bees accustomed to that entrance. I move as much young larvae above the excluder 2-3 days before graft as I can....1 day before graft I slide in board to make the top box(es) queenless. I take out the young larvae leaving young nurse bees in starter/finisher. i put cells into polish and make sure there is enough pollen/nectar. The next day I graft and 24 hrs later I remove the slide after cells where started making the cell builder queenright. They stay in the queenright colony above the excluder most of the time until I pull the cells and place in nucs. If I need to do another graft I have always waited to move them when the cells are capped.

This has worked well for me. I basically follow the method Sue Coby outlined in a 2 part article that she wrote for ABJ.

The method I am asking about uses a two story hive body set up and a queen excluder. No slide is used as in the cloake system.
I have been using this set up since '99 and have yet to see anyone else that has tried it.
Just curious?
Seems natural with less disturbance to the hive and I can even continue to collect honey from this starter during a honey flow.
Good day.
Frank Wyatt

I take the queen right hive, put all the brood in an upper story without the queen. I then put the queen on the bottom box with empty frames and some sealed brood, next queen excluder, next an empty box with frames, next the box with all the young and sealed brood.
Now what happens is all the field bees go to the bottom and take care of the queen. She can not come up to the top to the brood. The empty box keeps her separated from the nurse bees who now think they are queenless. I then give them queen cells to work on. There is no loss in production since there is no disruption in colony growth or strength. If you want to play you can then set another queen excluder above the empty box and allow one queen to emerge to help in doubling the hive population for the fall and winter. You can replace the old queen then.
Dan

Frank, I think we use the same system you do but we use a double excluder for added insurance. We start our grafts in a queenless broodless nuc then after about 24 hours transfer them to the queenright colony to finish until ready to put the cells in mating nucs. Works great.
Sheri

Queen right Cell Builders

Sorry for the delay- been out of town and """busy"""

My Starter/Finsihers are two story.
Set up of top brood box for two frames of cells started are as follows:
H- stands for open celled honey/ Feeder
B- Open Brood frame--Very young Brood
P- Pollen frame
C- Cell frame
H-B-B-C-P-P-C-B-B-H
or
H-B-P-C-B-B-C-P-B-H

QUEEN EXCLUDER

Bottom brood box consist of the existing queen
and all other left over frames from the
double brood box starter

There are several methods that can be used to start queen cells and
it is better to know at least two of them in case conditions will not allow one
or the other to work
Frank

now I have pretty much always used swarm boxes but the fellow (it was his daughter that I was talking with in front of your booth at the ABF meeting in Austin) from whom I buy cells in the spring uses queenright (double deep) boxes for starting cells.

he use a set of simple manipulation in regards to the two boxs (I think he learned this method from one of the Gunters) which I think is mostly designed to shift the age distribution of the workers within the two boxs to maximize cell production. he set up the top box much like you have suggested in your last post. he does a quite limited manipulation in altering the entrances and the two boxes position (top and bottom boxs are flipped) to maintain cell production motivation.

Hey-
Sounds like they use a very simular system. It appears to generate less disturbance in the setup. (My opinion)

I was making an attempt to show how I set up the top box of the DBL brood Box
with a queen excluder installed under the top box and the miscell. frames and the queen in the bottom box
I just run my starters as normal DBL brood boxes.

I also use a swarm box in the early spring because the above set up will not get the number of cells started that is needed at that early date. With the fluctuations in night time temps. the nurse bees will cluster and pull away from the new cells that need starting and you will loose them.